Binti

If I had an adolescent daughter, I would give her this book to read. It’s a story which just makes you realise we’ve been missing the point with sci-fi and fantasy for so long. It takes one look at all those tired old tropes of generally white, generally male fictional heroes and says…no. We’re not going there.

Instead, the protagonist of this coming of age narrative is Binti – the first of her people to attend Oomza University, a girl who grasps her own destiny with firm hands, defying expectation and prejudice to live her dreams. And at the same time doing her bit to bring about some inter-planetary harmony.

“There’s more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor’s work than in whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics,” wrote the late, great Ursula K. Le Guin. And it’s true to say that every page lights a fire under our complacency about science fiction – from the concept of maths as a mental state, through to Binti’s casual acceptance of difference and diversity as a fact of interplanetary lore and life. And running underneath all of that is Okorafor’s subtle challenge to white-centric sci-fi narratives. It’s a book which makes you cry out for more heroes like Binti, who proves her strength when she seems at her most vulnerable. A must read.